[zenciadam]

A lot of it has to do with two generations of well meaning social engineering in our schools and workplaces to constantly acknowledge and celebrate diversity. But doing this entails never forgetting and never really feeling truly comfortable.

Every time there's a team member from some under-represented group, there is a tendency to think of it as living in some kind of "diverse workplace" stock photo instead of just getting stuff done.

[rayiner]

Social engineering doesn't create the discomfort, it's intrinsic.

I grew up in northern Virginia in the early 1990's. The town, which is quite cosmopolitan today, was almost totally white and rather conservative at the time. The "social engineering" and relative liberalism of northern Virginia wouldn't arrive for several years yet. I distinctly remember one day in first or second grade being asked to draw a picture of my family. I didn't color in the faces because I didn't want to use the brown crayon for that when everyone else was using the cream-colored crayon. Nobody told me that brown was bad or anything silly like that--it was just obvious even as a small child that looking different than the people around you was significant.

[nine_k]

This is indeed sad. "Including" different people by constantly paying attention to their differences does not look productive to me.

See, e.g. green-eyed developers (a smaller minority in the world than many others) aren't celebrated; nobody cares what the color of your eyes is. If you paid attention to it, you'd get blank stares from colleagues: "what?"

When this begins to apply to people of different ethnic origins, we will have achieved equality.

[webXL]

I agree completely. I hear "celebrate diversity" all the time, but when you want to get to know someone, you usually try to find things in common. Commonality is just as important.